All
Just bought 25 metres of 1.5 m to 'move' the lighting cable in the loft out of the way of my new 270 mm of loft insulation. The drum is stamped 170608 but the cable does not have a date. There is a code after 'BASEC' of 078 but this is after the date stamp on the drum. HAs anyone else noticed this. PS It's not very nice cable, very difficult to slit the outer sheath with a stanley knife. How do other people remove the outer cable sheath without taking off their fingers too ?.
Andrew
Cable stripping - snip into the end with your wire cutters such that you can access the earth wire. Grab the earth wire with pliers, and holding the end of the cable with your fingers, just pull down the earth wire and it will split the outer sheathing as far as you want. Then just cut off the sheathing.
Rob
I thought everyone knew that !!!!
With practice you can use the side cutters to pull the wire as well - no need to change to the pliers that way.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember robgraham saying something like:
Traditional method - but you'll get some know-all coming along and telling you you can't do that any longer as it puts a strain on the centre conductor and it might break. Funny thing is, I've never found a broken centre conductor that was ever caused by this practice.
Grimly Curmudgeon coughed up some electrons that declared:
I've just been formally taught this method on the mini-course I'm doing (exams for VRQ/EAL Level 2 this weekend).
However, I find I prefer (given a lot of upcoming work):
without having to split it anyway.
FWIW I don't like that type of stripper for doing singles- and I've got just about every type made. My favourite type is:-
I don't 'know' so I can't be a know-all, but I've never done this because I feared it would put a strain on the centre conductor. It's always seemed bad practice to me.
Bah humbug.
WYSINNWYG
(what you see is not necessarily what you get)
Well, just try breaking a scrap piece. You'll not find it easy. I tend to start with a cut down the middle then pull out the ECC.
Well if you consider how wire is made in the first place, by drawing it through a hole in a die, tugging it out of the side of a pvc cable is nothing!
I have seen an electrician cursing a batch of T&E precisely because the earth wire snapped when he did just that. Might have been faulty, or just not the same as his usual supplies. It was quite a long time ago.
And I have managed to do it myself - but I dismissed that as being my cack-handedness - maybe pulling it out too fast (or slow)/at a bad angle/something else wrong.
If you use cutters to pull it, then you usually snip the end off afterwards so that you are not using the bit that is bent and dented from the grabbing and pulling exercise.
Yes, that's true but drawing copper will work harden it so it should be annealed after the drawing process, and one assumes that poor quality ECC that breaks is inadequately annealed which might well lead to the cable itself breaking at some stage of the installation process if it is being pulled through a narrow space or the likes. Rob
How not to do it...
Shhh there have to be some secrets.
Me too, I usually split it by nicking both sides of the outer sheath with side cutters and pulling the 2 thicker conductors apart.
I never liked to strain the earth wire that much.
Paul.
Make sure the cable is not twisted. Use a Stanley knife across the end of the cable and run it down with the blade on one sideof the earth condictor and angled towards it so that the sharpening angle on the blade is parallel to the earth conductor. Hope you can see what I mean.
Malcolm
Why the interest in the lack of date stamp anyway?
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